How do you know when you've hit product-market fit for a cafe app?

[William80]

So we built a functional prototype for a service that helps small cafes manage their local supplier orders, and a few owners are genuinely using it. But now I'm stuck on whether to call this "product-market fit" or if that's way too strong a term for just having a handful of happy early users. How did you guys know when you'd actually found it?

[MatthewC]

Nice to hear those cafe owners are using it and smiling That early traction feels real but I would not call it product-market fit yet It needs to show the signal sticks and the numbers look durable over a season

[LukeJ]

I am watching for repeat orders and time saved per week and a willingness to pay That kind of evidence makes the value stick not just a novelty If those hold up the case strengthens

[Ethan.J]

Frame feels big I wonder if the market is too small or the cafe owners have other priorities Maybe a bigger test could change the view

[OliverJ]

Could be that you are solving the wrong problem for the owner It might be about habit formation or vendor trust more than the tool itself

[EthanPT]

From a reader habit angle the product almost feels like a quiet helper rather than a showpiece It might benefit from a slower reveal and more texture in the stories of the users

[Sofia_W]

If you can show a path to scale across many small cafes while keeping margins and service simple you start talking about product-market fit in a real sense Yet there is a risk you are splitting attention between features and core value

[Zoey.D]

Maybe the right move is to stop chasing product-market fit and treat this as a learning engine A few experiments with pricing or supplier integrations could reveal what actually moves the needle